Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series Commons^™

Is Obesity Socially Contagious?, Ciani Jean Sparks

Statistics

The main objective of this paper is to analyze three different articles that discuss whether obesity could be socially contagious. According to the World Health Organization in 2013, obesity is the fifth leading risk for deaths around the world. This disease has dramatically increased in the last decade, which has led scientists to believe there are other factors contributing to the epidemic besides genetics. The first article I analyzed, written by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, provided a logistic regression model to estimate the odds of a person becoming obese. The model included the explanatory variables: age, sex, education, smoking …

Analysis Of Dietary Patterns Over Freshman Year Of College, Chelsea Lofland

Statistics

This analysis is an investigation of changes in Cal Poly students’ eating habits over freshman year. The motivation behind this was an interest in college students’ lifestyles; college is the first time most students live on their own and it can be an important maturation period. College is stressful, exciting, liberating, and terrifying all at the same time. This distinctive life experience, along with my desire to handle big and messy data, led me to this research question.

The response variable analyzed was food consumption and the explanatory variables were: sex, race, quarter, food group, stress, exercise, BMI, sleep quality …